Discrimination and unfair treatment in the workplace

The difficulties of researching discrimination are often unacknowledged when policy makers draw on survey data. We explore these difficulties by means of a discussion informed by labour-market sociology and a subsequent empirical discussion that draws on the results of the first Fair Treatment at Work Survey (FTWS). The great majority of respondents to the FTWS appeared to trust instrumental rationality to ensure that there was no discrimination in the labour market or the workplace. Given what we know of the difficulties of establishing the existence of discrimination, this widespread belief in its absence is shown to be ideological. It is both a determinant of survey results and an obstacle to changes needed to address patterns of disadvantage